34,500 New Yorkers can’t buy guns because of ‘mental health’ issues

34,500 New Yorkers can’t buy guns because of ‘mental health’ issues

New York state’s new mental health reporting system that requires doctors to report patients that could be a danger to themselves or others in order to deny them the ability to purchase or own a gun has an astonishing 34,500 people on the list.

Are there really that many dangerous, mentally unstable people in New York?

Most experts don’t think so. Even mental health professionals believe the number is too high.

New York Times:

The database, established in the aftermath of the mass shooting in 2012 at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and maintained by the state Division of Criminal Justice Services, is the result of the Safe Act. It is an expansive package of gun control measures pushed through by the administration of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. The law, better known for its ban on assault weapons, compels licensed mental health professionals in New York to report to the authorities any patient “likely to engage in conduct that would result in serious harm to self or others.”

But the number of entries in the database highlights the difficulty of America’s complicated balancing act between public safety and the right to bear arms when it comes to people with mental health issues. “That seems extraordinarily high to me,” said Sam Tsemberis, a former director of New York City’s involuntary hospitalization program for homeless and dangerous people, now the chief executive of Pathways to Housing, which provides housing to the mentally ill. “Assumed dangerousness is a far cry from actual dangerousness.”